Source Description

Joseph Berkowitz Kohn’s
“memoirs” give an account of the eventful life of a Jew born in the
Polish town
of Leczyca in
1841 who participated in various struggles for emancipation in his
homeland. In 1863
Berkowitz Kohn was
forced to flee Poland and went to Hamburg, where he set
up his own business as a merchant. Beginning in the mid-1870s, he became active in the Social
Democratic Party and especially in cooperatives. He became a well-respected
personality within Hamburg’s labor movement. Joseph Berkowitz Kohn died
in Hamburg in
1905. This short excerpt from the text, which is
about 100 pages long, is based on the diary he kept during the last three
decades of his life for his ten children and their descendants. Originally not
intended for publication, his notes were copied on a type writer by his daughter
Sophie. This typescript was given to the
Museum der Arbeit in
Hamburg,
presumably by Inge Henker, a distant relative
of Berkowitz Kohn. In
2006
Ulrich Bauche and Gertrud Pickhahn published
an annotated edition of his memoirs based on this version.Gertrud Pickhan /
Ulrich Bauche (eds.), Joseph Berkowitz Kohn, Erinnerungen. Ein Leben als
polnischer Freiheitskämpfer und hamburgischer Sozialdemokrat, 1841–1905,
Hamburg et al. 2006.